The Bible: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Riches John

Author:Riches, John [Riches, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2000-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

If the view of history constructed out of the Bible was vulnerable to attack, then so too was its cosmology. Copernicus taught that the planets, including of course the earth, revolved around the sun. In the strange and bloodthirsty story in Joshua 10, Joshua, with the armies of the five kings of the Amorites at his mercy, prays to God, ‘Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.’ (10: 12.) The prayer is answered: the sun and moon stand still for about a day, while Joshua’s armies slaughter their opponents. The conflict between the cosmology in this story and Copernicus’s understanding of planetary movements is clear. Even Luther and his disciple Melanchthon use the biblical story to dismiss the views of Copernicus. As Scholder points out, at this time, to all except those with considerable mathematical ability, Copernicus’s theory of the revolution of the celestial bodies would have appeared as just one among a number of current speculations. Melanchthon, after citing a number of biblical passages, among them Joshua 10: 12–13, categorically rejects Copernicus: ‘Strengthened by these divine testimonies, we hold fast to the truth and do not allow ourselves to be led astray from it by the blind works of those who think it the glory of the intellect to confuse the free arts.’ (Scholder, p. 49, citing Corpus Reformatorum 13, cols 216–17.) However, the theologian Andreas Osiander, who prepared an edition of Copernicus’s work published in Nuremberg in 1543, saw the seriousness of Copernicus’s challenge more clearly and attempted to deflect it by arguing that Copernicus’s views were mere hypotheses, useful for predicting the positions of the planets, but not intended to be factual statements about the workings of the universe. His calculations were, said Osiander, of great value but knowledge of the true causes of the movements of heavenly bodies is beyond the reach of our minds (Scholder, pp. 47–8).

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